Rieva Lesonsky

Rieva Lesonsky is a Columnist for Small Business Trends covering employment, retail trends and women in business. She is President and Founder of GrowBiz Media, a content and consulting company specializing in covering small businesses and entrepreneurship. Before co-founding GrowBiz Media, Lesonsky was Editorial Director of Entrepreneur Magazine. A nationally known speaker and authority on entrepreneurship, Rieva has been covering America's entrepreneurs for more than 26 years. Lesonsky has appeared on hundreds of radio shows and numerous local and national television programs, including the Today Show, Good Morning America, CNN, Fox Business News, The Martha Stewart show and Oprah and can regularly be seen on MSNBC's Your Business. Lesonsky has written several books about small business and entrepreneurship, including the bestseller, Start Your Own Business. She is an editor-at-large at AllBusiness.com and contributes to The Huffington Post and numerous business Web sites. Many organizations have recognized Lesonsky for her tireless devotion to helping entrepreneurs. She served on the Small Business Administration's National Advisory Council for six years, and was honored by the SBA as a Small Business Media Advocate and a Woman in Business Advocate. The Collegiate Entrepreneurs Organization honored her for helping drive "the entrepreneurial revolution in secondary education." The ASBDC awarded her a "Champion of Small Business" award. In 2003 Lesonsky was inducted into the Business Journalism Hall of Fame. Lesonsky's newest eBook, Startup 101, is available at SmallBizDaily. You can follow her on Twitter: @Rieva.